HP 7140xi multi-function printer woes and fix

May 17, '04 08:55:00AM

Contributed by: rpitcairn

I am impelled to share this little story just in case it helps someone else in my situation. About a year ago I bought an HP 7140xi multifunction printer / scanner / fax / copier to use in a small office with a PowerBook and an iBook running an AirPort Extreme wireless setup. I was assured by the seller and HP that it would work fine "with OS X." What I found was that it would not work wirelessly, only through USB on one computer. Sure, I could "printer share," but invariably my computer was asleep when my wife wanted to print with her iBook. In addition to this limitation, only the printing would work reliably and even that word is not appropriate. It worked reliably for a while...

The printer would not be found, or if found, would not print, or would print but not eject the page (with MS Word). I couldn't check ink levels or other configuration choices supposedly available. I won't even go into the things that I couldn't do. I spent probably a hundred hours trying to solve this -- calling Apple, calling HP (who always kicked me into the Windows group no matter what I told the person that routed the calls). I reinstalled the HP printer software probably 20 times as this would usually fix the problem for a week or so. Apple techs told me (more than one) that wireless would not work with this unit -- period. HP said it should but had nothing to offer than what I was already doing. Or let's say all their advice came to naught. I was using the latest OS (10.3.3), the latest HP software, ran permissions repair and Disk Warrior a zillion times, fsck -- everything I could think of.

The final straw came when I hooked my wife's G4 iBook, running 10.3 to the unit by USB and no matter what I did it would not recognize the printer. It would with my PowerBook, but not her iBook. Go figure. At this point I was ready to junk the HP and start with something else, even though I had bought an extended contract for it.

About this time, I saw here in the hints about using GIMP software to run printers so I downloaded gimp-print-4.2.6-0.ppc and installed it on both computers. Added to the printer list in the Printer Setup, tried printing with both computers -- and I could, but the output was not good. Dark, not crisp.

Really gave up, made my HP driver software default again and on my wife's iBook, I removed the GIMP software. And, mirabile dictu, everything now works for both our laptops -- printing, scanning, wireless, etc. Has worked reliably now for a month. I can't believe it, but want to think it is solved. I assume that the GIMP software installed something missing in the OS X package, as I am now using the HP driver like I did before. Must have been something installed behind the scenes. Beyond me, but I want to share this story in case anyone else is struggling with one of these multi-function printers and to offer a possible solution to them.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040427235336609